This evening, viewing a rare hour of television, the Editor was moved to wonder: what is it about dancing, singing, cartoon fish which sound like stand-up comedians which so holds the public in thrall? We offer for examples:
The Little Mermaid - "Sorry, sorry. This movie is so wonderful and just makes me feel so good. I always cry at the ending. It's just so happy and giddy and... oh! Just watch the movie, you'll know what I'm talking about." -- "Lovable characters like Sebastian, Scuttle, and Flounder gave the heart to the story."
Finding Nemo - "John Ratzenberger does a hysterical turn as the school of fish we all saw in the previews." -- "The world of "Finding Nemo" is simply alive with lovable creatures swimming about their daily lives under the ocean, darting across the screen in playful manners."
The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea - "Great new characters are added including Dash the walrus, who has been given such a great personality that viewers can't help but to find him likable, especially children." -- "The film is great, but nothing will replace the original (which in my opinion is the greatest film ever made). It's second best to the original. "
Wee Sing Under the Sea - "The over twenty musical numbers include three original songs, "Bubble Bubble", "The Clam Dance" and "Pollution Solution.""
Shark Tale - "The story was simple but fun, I really liked the way the parallels between a vegetarian shark and coming out of the closet." -- "Next, I introduce Oscar the hyper bling-bling fish (voiced by Will Smith)."
Are musical, anthropomorphic fish really enough of a brilliant concept to warrant such a barrage of aquatic hijinks? The Editor thinks not. However, who am I to argue with this (hopefully three year old) film critic's opinion: "I like the ending [of the LM] where Triton made a rainbow for everyone." Yay, a rainbow! For everyone! It's the happiest day of my life, since that day the bad man didn't take my ice cream cone.
The Editor is particularly amazed by the vast number of slobbering cod-o-philes who seem to think that these animated extravaganzas really give one a great understanding of undersea life. For example: "it Opens up a new world for kids and shows you what the ocean really contains and how the fish really act." Oops, I must not have been at the beach the day that troupe of acrobatic sunfish swarmed out of the surf and burst into spontaneous song. And strangely enough, the octopus in biology class didn't favor us with an orchestral rendition of popular seventies love ballads - but then, with all of those people around, it must have been shy.
Newsflash for everyone who's ever masturbated to a screenshot of Lara Croft: Ariel the little nubile mermaid DOES NOT EXIST. Don't believe these people are really out there? (Well, okay, we all know they're really out there, that's not what I meant.) Here's the proof: "I have a major crush on Ariel ever since i was young, she is a beauty for Sore-Eyes and the soundtrack is excellent too." Glad to hear that. We recommend Visine and getting a fucking clue, for this sort of ailment.
Apparently we're not the only ones who noticed the striking similarity between all of the above films, which is that most of the characters belong beer-battered on a plate with chips, and instead are psychotically swimming (and dancing!) around the TV screens of the unsuspecting, terrorizing generations of youngsters with their ill-conceived musical mummery.
"Some say it's unfair to compare Finding Nemo and Shark Tale, them being totally different movies with the only matching characteristic being antropomorphic fish, but it seems that the comparison is inevitable."
Totally different movies. Okaaaaay. So one's about a fish, doing something pointless while singing, the main draw of the film apparently being some B-list celebrity as a slightly more annoying fish, who sings a little more. And the other, which is TOTALLY different, is about a fish, doing something pointless while singing, the main draw of the film being several A-list celebrities playing fish which look like them, and singing all the while. Who says it's unfair? Let them step forward! [Deafening silence] Indeed.
"I'm allergic to fake sentiment and pathetic feel-good movies but I was really touched by this one. " [Finding Nemo]
Where did it touch you? Do you feel violated? I don't like having singing fish in that particular place, myself, I must admit. Once again, Visine may reduce the swelling.
"The characters are very memorable and some of Disney's most beloved, with Sebastian the crab providing both a side-kick and an important role."
I will not insult the intelligence of my readers by pointing out the flaw(s) here.
Just to provide a fair and balanced overview of the intellectual capacity of the IMDB site's commentators, however, I will provide this moment of sanity.
"I never thought I would say this, but this movie is worse than "Return of Jafar". " [LM II]
See. One sensible, thinking individual out of a sea swarming with Disneyites and creepy tapdancing oysters. Thank god. Actually, that sort of makes it even more distressing, doesn't it? So here. I don't want anyone to feel down, after reading this, and therefore:
The Editor made a rainbow for everyone!
Now don't you feel better?
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4 comments:
Hey, I worked on Shark Tale! I'll tolerate no bad mouthing of it, despite the fact that it mostly sucked ass. More importantly, I don't remember any fish singing in it. Dancing and generally being stupid, sure, but not singing. The same goes for Nemo, for that matter. Maybe I just blocked it out. The tragedy about Shark Tale was that it was originally a much better story, titled Sharkslayer, which was much more of a parody of mob films. It was darker and scarier, but after 'Sinbad,' an awful 2D animated POS from Dreamworks flopped at the theaters, the powers that be (Jeffrey Katzenberg) decided that they had to tone down the film and make it more kid friendly. Sharkslayer became A Shark Tale and the movie took a big fat nose dive.
So, I guess the answer to your question is that studios still think animation has to target kids, even if it is perfectly capable of being an adult film, despite the fact that plenty of films targetting adult audiences manage to bring in $200+ million in domestic box office. Movie Studios are dominated by beancounters and marketing types, not artists. The artistic folks are making independant films, and you can't do animation in an independant context, at least not in the US, where the unions drive up the cost of a feature length animated film to $60-100 million. Animation costs WAY too much, takes far too long (years), and is very people intensive. So, until someone beats the beancounters about the head with a stuffed mermaid, animated films are going to continue to target kids at the expense of art.
Oh, I should correct myself by pointing out that there are several excellent independant animated films, but they are all made overseas. Some examples include 'The Triplets of Belleville,' which won much acclaim, and 'Spirited Away,' which won the Best Animated Film oscar a couple of years ago (although admittedly, that's because there was neither a Pixar nor a Shrek film released that year! This year, we got both.). Personally, I have about as much tolerance for the automatic fawning over Japanese art films as I do for technology hype, so I don't really understand all the hoopla about Spirited Away, other than the fact that the animation is quite pretty. But still, everyone else seems to like it. Then again, an awful lot of people liked the Little Mermaid, too, I suppose.
I'd like to say, before asking the editor to remove my double post, the I do, in fact, know how to spell independent, even if that wasn't entirely obvious from my first post. I blame the zombies.
I blame the zombies for the fish movies, too. I'm sure your work on Shark Tale was the best part of the whole benighted project.
I guess Disney is really the issue - more posts on this topic possibly to follow - but I swear by all the gods that ever were, if I ever have to see one more blasted foxtrotting shellfish, I will kill the person responsible.
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